AbstractIn this article, Scott discusses the recently released beta version of Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. He starts with the installation notes and then examines the various features included with the build. Scott demonstrates the various improvements shipped for Web Development, Client Development, WPF, WCF, Data Development, Visual Basic, C# and Team Foundation Server with relevant explanations, screen captures and code snippets.

Earlier today we shipped a public beta of our upcoming .NET
3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases. These servicing updates provide a
roll-up of bug fixes and performance improvements for issues reported since we
released the products last November. They also contain a number of
feature additions and enhancements that make building .NET applications better
(see below for details on some of them).

We plan to ship the final release of both .NET 3.5 SP1 and
VS 2008 SP1 this summer as free updates. You can download and install the
beta here.

The SP1 beta released today is still in beta form - so you
should be careful about installing it on critical machines. There are a
few important SP1 Beta installation notes to be aware of:

1) If you are running Windows Vista you should make sure you
have Vista SP1 installed before trying to install .NET 3.5 SP1 Beta.
There are some setup issues with .NET 3.5 SP1 when running on the Vista RTM
release. These issues will be fixed for the final .NET 3.5 SP1 release -
until then please make sure to have Vista SP1 installed before trying to
install .NET 3.5 SP1 beta.

2) If you have installed the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight 2
Beta1 package on your machine, you must uninstall it - as well as uninstall the
KB949325 update for VS 2008 - before installing VS 2008 SP1 Beta (otherwise you
will get a setup failure). You can find more details on the exact steps
to follow here (note: you must uninstall two separate things).
It is fine to have the Silverlight 2 runtime on your machine with .NET 3.5 SP1
- the component that needs to be uninstalled is the VS 2008 Tools for
Silverlight 2 package. We will release an updated VS 2008 Tools for
Silverlight package in a few weeks that works with the VS 2008 SP1 beta.

3) There is a change in behavior in the .NET 3.5 SP1 beta
that causes a problem with the shipping versions of Expression Blend.
This behavior change is being reverted for the final .NET 3.5 SP1 release, at
which time all versions of Blend will have no problems running. Until
then, you need to download this recently updated version of Blend 2.5 to work around
this issue.

The VS Web Dev Tools team has more details (including
specific bug fix details) on some of the VS specific work here. Below are more details on some of the work in
the web-space:

ASP.NET Data Scaffolding Support (ASP.NET Dynamic Data)

.NET 3.5 SP1 adds support for a rich ASP.NET data
"scaffolding" framework that enables you to quickly build functional
data-driven web application. With the ASP.NET Dynamic Data feature you can
automatically build web UI (with full CRUD - create, read, update, delete - support) against a variety of data object models (including LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Entities, REST
Services, and any other ORM or object model with a dynamic data provider).

SP1 adds this new functionality to the existing GridView,
ListView, DetailsView and FormView controls in ASP.NET, and enables smart
validation and flexible data templating options. It also delivers new
smart filtering server controls, as well as adds support for automatically
traversing primary-key/foreign-key relationships and displaying friendly
foreign key names - all of which saves you from having to write a ton of code.

You can learn more more about this feature from Scott
Hanselman's videos and tutorials here.

ASP.NET Routing Engine (System.Web.Routing)

.NET 3.5 SP1 includes a flexible new URL routing engine that
allows you to map incoming URLs to route handlers. It includes support for both parsing parameters from clean URLs (for example: /Products/Browse/Beverages),
as well as support to dynamically calculate and generate new URLs from route
registrations.

This new routing engine is used by both ASP.NET Dynamic Data
as well as the new ASP.NET MVC framework. It will support both WebForms
and MVC based requests.

ASP.NET AJAX Back/Forward Button History Support

.NET 3.5 SP1 adds new APIs to ASP.NET AJAX to allow you to
better control the history list of a browser (enabling you to control the
behavior of the back/forward button of the browser).

You can learn more about this feature in the article here and the screencast here.

ASP.NET AJAX Script Combining Support

.NET 3.5 SP1 introduces a new <CompositeScript>
element on the <asp:ScriptManager> server control, which allows you to
declaratively define multiple script references within it. All the script
references within the CompositeScript element are combined together on the
server and served as a single script to the client, reducing the number of
requests to the server and improving page load time for ASP.NET AJAX
applications.

The script combining feature supports both path based
scripts and assembly resource based scripts, and dynamically serves up the
combined scripts using the ScriptResources.axd handler.

In February we released a HotFix roll-up that included a number of performance
improvements and bug fixes for the VS 2008 Web Designer. VS 2008 SP1
includes all of these fixes, as well as a number of additional performance
improvements.

VS 2008 SP1 adds richer source code formatting support for JavaScript as well (both inline <script> blocks and .js files). You can
now set your JavaScript coding preferences using the Tools->Options dialog:

Figure 1

These preferences will be automatically used as you type new
Javascript code in the source editor. You can also select existing code,
right-click, and choose the "Format Selection" option to apply your
style preferences to existing JavaScript code. You can learn more about
this new feature here.

VS 2008 includes JavaScript Intellisense support in source view. The
intellisense support with the initial VS 2008 release works well with vanilla
JavaScript as well as code written using the ASP.NET AJAX JavaScript type
patterns. JavaScript is a very flexible language, though, and many
JavaScript libraries use this flexibility to full advantage to implement their
features - sometimes in ways that prevented the intellisense engine from
providing completion support.

VS 2008 SP1 adds much better intellisense support for popular JavaScript libraries (we specifically did work to support JQuery, Prototype,
Scriptaculous, ExtJS, and other popular libraries). You will get better
default intellisense when you reference these libraries. We are also
looking at whether we can maintain additional intellisense hint files that you
can download to get even better intellisense and documentation support for some of the more popular libraries.

Below is an example of using a JQuery startup function with
the VS 2008 SP1 JavaScript intellisense engine:

Visual Studio Refactoring Support for WCF
Services in ASP.NET Projects

VS 2008 SP1 adds better refactoring support for WCF services included within both ASP.NET Web Site and ASP.NET Web Application
Projects.

If you use the refactoring support to rename the class name, interface contract, or namespace of a WCF service, VS 2008 SP1
will now automatically fix up the web.config and SVC file references to it.

Visual Studio Support for Classic ASP
Intellisense and Debugging

Previous versions of Visual Studio included support for intellisense and debugging within classic ASP (.asp) pages. The file and
project templates to create classic ASP pages/projects hasn't been in VS for a
few releases, though, and with the initial VS 2008 we incorrectly assumed this
meant that people weren't still using the classic ASP support. We heard
feedback after we shipped that indeed they were.

With VS 2008 SP1 this support for classic ASP
intellisense and debugging is back:

The Visual Web Developer 2008 Express edition (which is
free) is being updated in SP1 to add support for both class library and ASP.NET
Web Application project types. Previous versions of Visual Web Developer
Express only supported ASP.NET web-site projects.

Among other benefits, the support of class library and web
application projects will enable ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight projects to be
built with the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express. All of the above
JavaScript, Dynamic Data, Classic ASP, and AJAX improvements work with Visual
Web Developer Express as well.

Tim Sneath has a great blog post that talks about some of
the client improvements here. Below are more details on them:

Application Startup and Working Set Performance
Improvements

.NET 3.5 SP1 includes significant performance improvements
to the CLR that enable much faster application startup times - in particular
with "cold start" scenarios (where no .NET application is already
running). Much of these gains were achieved by changing the layout of
blocks within CLR NGEN images, and by significantly optimizing disk IO access
patterns. We also made some nice optimizations to our JIT code generator
that allow much better inlining of methods that utilize structs.

We are today measuring up to 40% faster application startup
improvements for large .NET client applications with SP1 installed. These
optimizations also have the nice side-effect of improving ASP.NET application
request per second throughput by up to 10% in some cases.

New .NET Framework Client Profile Setup Package

.NET 3.5 SP1 introduces a new setup package option for
developers building .NET client applications called the ".NET Framework
Client Profile". This provides a new setup installer that enables a
smaller, faster, and simpler installation experience for .NET client applications
on machines that do not already have the .NET Framework installed.

The .NET Framework Client Profile setup contains just those
assemblies and files in the .NET Framework that are typically used for client
application scenarios. For example: it includes Windows Forms, WPF, and
WCF. It does not include ASP.NET and those libraries and components used
primarily for server scenarios. We expect this setup package to be about
26MB in size, and it can be downloaded and installed much quicker than the full
.NET Framework setup package.

The assemblies and APIs in the .NET Framework Client setup
package are 100% identical to those in the full .NET Framework setup package
(they are literally the same binaries). This means that applications can
target both the client profile and full profile of .NET 3.5 SP1 (no
recompilation required). All .NET applications that work using the .NET
Client Profile setup automatically work with the full .NET Framework.

A developer can indicate that the client application they
are building supports both the .NET Framework Client Profile and the full .NET
Framework by pulling up the project properties page for a client application
within VS 2008 SP1. Within the project properties page they can select a
new checkbox that indicates it only requires those assemblies included in the
.NET Framework Client Profile:

Figure 5

VS 2008 will then ensure that the project can
only reference those assemblies shipped in the client profile setup package
(and it will generate a compile error if you try and use a type in an assembly
not included in the client redist). The compiled client application will
then run on machines that have both the full .NET Framework installed, as well
as machines that only have the .NET Framework Client Profile installed.

If you have a machine that only has the .NET
Framework Client Profile installed, and you try and run a .NET application on
it that did not mark itself as supporting the .NET Framework Client Profile,
then the CLR will refuse to run the application - and will instead prompt the
end-user to upgrade to the full .NET Framework package. This ensures that
applications always run correctly - and that developers do not need to worry
about missing assembly exceptions at runtime if a user tries to run an
application that requires the full .NET Framework on a machine that only has
the .NET Framework Client Profile installed.

We believe that a large class of .NET client
applications will be able to use this new .NET Client Profile setup to
significantly speed up their installation, and enable a much more consumer
friendly experience.

New .NET Framework Setup Bootstrapper for
Client Applications

.NET 3.5 SP1 introduces a new
"bootstrapper" component that you can use with client applications to
help automate making sure that the right version of the .NET Framework is
installed.

The bootstrapper component can handle
automatically downloading and installing either the .NET Framework Client
Profile or the full .NET Framework Setup Package from the Internet if your
machine doesn't have either of them installed. The boostrapper can also
automatically handle upgrading machines that have a previous version of the
.NET Framework installed. For example, if your machine already has .NET
3.0 installed, and your application requires .NET 3.5, the bootstrapper can
optionally download just the update files needed to upgrade it to .NET 3.5 (and
avoid having to download the full .NET Framework setup download).

The setup bootstrapper component can be used
with both ClickOnce based setup packages, as well as with third party installer
products (like Installshield). The boostrapper optionally enables fully
customized setup branding experiences (splash screens, custom setup wizard
steps, etc) and should make it much easier to build optimized client setup
experiences.

ClickOnce Client Application Deployment
Improvements

.NET 3.5 SP1 includes several improvements for
ClickOnce deployment of both Windows Forms and WPF applications. Some of
these improvements include:

·Support for the .NET Framework Client Profile (all
ClickOnce features are supported with it)

·ClickOnce applications can now be programmatically
installed through a ‘Setup.exe’ while displaying a customized, branded install
UX

SP1 also adds support for better data
scalability in WPF. The ListView, ListBox and TreeView controls now support "item container recycling" and "virtualization" support which allows you to easily achieve a 40% performance improvement with scrolling
scenarios. These controls also now optionally support a "deferred
scrolling" feature which allows you to avoid scrolling in real time and
instead wait until a user releases the scroll thumb (the default scrolling mode
in Outlook). This can be useful when scrolling over very large data sets
quickly.

·MultiSelector support to handle multi-selection and
bulk editing scenarios

·IEditableCollectionView support to interface data
controls to data sources and enable editing/adding/removing items in a
transactional way

Performance improvements when binding to
IEnumerable data sources

WPF also now exposes hooks that enable
developers to write custom panels w/ virtualized scrolling. We'll be
using this support together with the above data binding improvements to build
the new WPF datagrid that will be shipping later this year.

WPF Extensible Shader Effects

.NET 3.5 SP1 adds support in WPF for a new
shader effects architecture and API that allows extremely expressive visual
effects to be created and applied to any control or element within WPF.
These shader effects support blending multiple input compositions
together. What makes them particularly powerful is that WPF executes
effects (including custom effects you build yourself) using the GPU - giving
you fully hardware accelerated graphics performance. Like almost
everything in WPF, you can also use WPF databinding and animation on the properties
of an effect (allowing them to be fully integrated into an experience).

Applying an effect onto a Control is super
easy - just set a Control's "Effect" property. For example, to
add a hardware accelerated drop-shadow effect on a button you can use the
built-in <DropShadowEffect> on it via either code or XAML:

Figure 7

Which will cause the button to render like so:

Figure 8

Because Effects are extensible, developers can
create their own custom Effect objects and apply them. For example, a
custom "DirectionalBlurEffect" could be created and added to a
ListBox control to change its scroll appearance to use a blur effect if you
rapidly scroll across it:

Figure 9

Keep an eye on Greg Schechter's blog to learn more about how the Effects
architecture works and to learn how you can both create and apply new effects
within your applications (his first set of posts are here).

Note: In addition to introducing the new Shader Effects API,
WPF in SP1 also has updated the existing Blur and DropShadow Bitmap effects
already in WPF to be hardware accelerated.

WPF Interoperability with Direct3D

.NET 3.5 SP1 adds support to efficiently integrate Direct3D
directly into WPF. This gives you more direct access to the hardware and
to take full advantage of the Direct3D API within WPF applications. You
will be able to treat Direct3D content just like an image within an
application, as well as use Direct3D content as textures on WPF controls.

For example, below are three samples from the Direct3D SDK:

Figure 10

We could either load them in as image surfaces within a WPF
application, or map them

Figure 11

Note: the Direct3D integration isn't today's
SP1 beta release. It will appear in the final SP1 release.

VS 2008 SP1 includes several significant
improvements for WPF projects and the WPF designer. These include:

·Several performance improvements

·Events tab support within the property browser

·Ability to sort properties alphabetically in the
property browser

·Margin snaplines which makes form layout much
quicker

·Better designer support for TabControl, Expander,
and Grid

·Code initiated refactoring now updates your XAML
(including both control declarations and event declarations in XAML)

·Go to Definition and Find All References now support things declared in XAML

The debugger has also been updated in SP1 so
that runtime errors in XAML markup (for example: referencing styles,
datasources and/or other objects that don't exist) will now be better
identified within the debugger:

.NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 include a bunch of improvements
for data development. Some of them include:

SQL 2008 Support

VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 are being updated to include support for the upcoming SQL 2008 release. Visual Studio 2008 data designers, projects and
wizards now fully supporting connecting and working against SQL 2008
databases.

ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to Entities:

.NET 3.5 SP1 includes the new ADO.NET Entity Framework,
which allows developers to define a higher-level Entity Data Model over their
relational data, and then program in terms of this model. Concepts like
inheritance, complex types and relationships (including M:M support) can be modeled using it. VS 2008 SP1 now includes built-in designer support to help with this modeling:

Figure 13

The ADO.NET Entity Framework and the VS 2008 Entity
Framework Designer both support a pluggable provider model that allows them to
be used with any database (including Oracle, DB2, MySql, PostgreSQL, SQLite, VistaDB,
Informix, Sybase, and others).

Developers can then use LINQ and LINQ to Entities to query,
manipulate, and update these entity objects.

ADO.NET Data Services (formerly code-named "Astoria")

.NET 3.5 SP1 includes a flexible framework that enables the
creation of REST-based data services. Formerly code-named "Astoria", the ADO.NET Data Services framework provides support for publishing data
through a standard REST URI syntax and using standard HTTP verbs to operate on
the data resources. Developers can easily expose data models created
using the ADO.NET Entity Framework, and/or use a pluggable provider model to
expose other data models.

In addition to publishing data sources, the framework also
adds a client API for working with remote REST services. Included with
this client API is a LINQ library that allows the remote query of REST
services.

The VB and C# teams have also added some nice improvements
to VS 2008 SP1:

Visual Basic

You can now add "XML to Schema" items to Visual
Basic projects. On adding these project items a wizard will open that
allows you to create a XSD schema set from a variety of XML sources. This
schema set is then added to the project and it enables VB XML intellisense.
This support was previously available as a web download - you can learn more
about it here.

A XSD browser is also now included with VS 2008 SP1 and
allows you to browse XSD schema sets. With the final SP1 release,
developers will be able to right-click on XML element names (either in XML
properties or XML literals) in the VB code editor and select “Go To XML Schema
Definition” - this will open the XSD browser and display the schema set (and
select the current element) for the VB project.

C#

The C# code editor now identifies and displays red squiggle
errors for many semantic code issues that previously required an explicit
compilation to identify. For example, if you try to declare and use an
unknown type in the C# code-editor today you won't see a compile error until
you do a build. Now with SP1 you'll see live red squiggle errors
immediately (no explicit compile required):

Figure 14

The debugger in VS 2008 SP1 has also been improved to
provide more debugging support for evaluating LINQ expressions and viewing
results at debug time:

Figure 15

LINQ enabled data sources now have a "Results
View" node show up within the debugger watch window. Expanding this node
will evaluate a LINQ expression and allow you to examine the materialized
objects it returns:

.NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 provide a bunch of bug fixes,
performance improvements, and additional feature enhancements that make
building all types of .NET applications better. It will be a fully
compatible service pack release.

We plan to ship the final release of both .NET 3.5 SP1 and
VS 2008 SP1 this summer as free updates. You can download and use the
beta now here.

Title:
Not seeing Classic ASP Intellisense
Name:
Dave Neely
Date:
2008-09-18 10:18:26 AM
Comment: I'm not seeing the intellisense for classic asp even in .asp pages. Is there a setting or library that you have to reference for this to work?

Title:
SP1 Classic ASP support not quite there
Name:
Dave Tigweld
Date:
2008-08-11 4:27:54 PM
Comment: Well now that the vs20008 sp1 rtm is out, I am having the same issue Tim mentions. Yes, I get my .asp color coding and intellisense back but only for .asp files. In VS 2005 all I had to do was to set the file assocition to web Editor for .inc file to make this work. Unfortunately this does not work in vs2008 sp1. What is the workaround?

Title:
Visual Studio Support for Classic ASP Intellisense and Debugging
Name:
Tim
Date:
2008-07-11 6:49:16 AM
Comment: Great so as long as we use .ASP pages and put VBscript at the top of each page it works. Not particularly useful though if you have one asp page including lots of .inc files that has all the code that you change on a day to day basis. At least in 2005 the highlighting worked in the .inc files. Now its comlpetely useless.